All the Secrets of the Universe and Some Really Important Stuff Too!
Among so many conflicting ideas and so many different perspectives, the honest man is confused and distressed and the skeptic becomes wicked … Since one must take sides, one might as well choose the side that is victorious, the side which devastates, loots, and burns. Considering the alternative, it is better to eat than to be eaten.
Napoleon Bonaparte
October Viewing – 9
So, this being October 30th and tomorrow a really long work day, it’s a pretty good bet this will be the last “October Viewing” of the year. A good friend who has been following this series of posts proposed the “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” movies as a good subject. And we both liked how it sort of dovetails with the whole woke Democrat pod-people meme. You know, how they speak like lifeless automatons and point and shriek if you reveal yourself not to be one of them.
Now my friend felt that even the two reboots were good subjects for the post. But as in all things I am conservative. So, let’s harken back to the 1956 original in all its black and white splendor. Dut, dut, dut daaaah!
Spoiler alert! If you want to avoid knowing the plot, skip to the boldened text below to just get my opinion.
Sturdy character actor Kevin McCarthy (no, not the politician!) stars as Dr. Miles J. Bennell. He’s a small-town doctor in the fictitious California town of Santa-something-or-other. Miles is puzzled to find that several patients are claiming that their friends and relatives have been replaced by visually identical individuals that lack any emotion. One case is a young child claiming his mother has been replaced.
So, Miles and his girlfriend Becky and their friend Jack and his wife “Teddy” begin investigating a very strange series of occurrences. Jack finds what looks like a human body but with very indistinct features, almost as if acid had burned away the facial features. Shockingly, over time the “body” begins to take on Jack’s features. And more of these bodies begin appearing. Eventually they learn that enormous seed pods are the source of these transforming “bodies.”
And soon the two couples discover that the great majority of the townspeople are pod people. The distinguishing characteristic of pod people is a complete lack of emotion in their voice and actions. While pursuing an unsuccessful attempt to broadcast this alarming news to the rest of the outside world, Jack and Teddy become “podified” and so Jack provides the exposition to Miles and Becky to explain exactly what the hell is going on.
In his sedate pod-man voice Jack explains that spores floating through outer space landed on Earth where they grew into the pods. If a pod is placed near someone (how near?) and that person falls asleep the pod will absorb the person’s memories and appearance and somehow disintegrate the real person and replace him. Jack tries to convince Miles and Becky that the procedure is painless and all for the good. Miles and Becky decide not to cooperate and run away. They try to escape from town. But they have to pass through a crowd of pod-people who are loading up trucks with seed pods for delivery to the surrounding towns. They try to act like pod-people by being emotionless but are given away by Becky’s scream when she witnesses a traffic accident. Women!
The pod people chase after them but the couple successfully take refuge in a cave that was conveniently around when they needed it. But when Miles goes out to scout an escape route Becky falls asleep and by the time Miles returns, she’s fully podified and sounds the alarm to the rest of the wooden-faced pursuers to catch Miles.
Sleep-deprived Miles runs in a nightmarish state and ends up in another town trying to warn people on the highway about the pod people. Of course, they assume he’s nuts and drag him to a hospital where he tells his story to the skeptical doctors. But just at the end of his story an emergency room worker reports that a traffic accident with a truck full of giant seed pods has produced casualties in the ER. And so, the doctors get to work calling in the FBI!
Dunt, dunt daaah!
End of the spoiler alert!
So, as you can see this is a hum-dinger of a paranoid’s dream come true. They’re all out to get you and they’re all monsters. And the emotionless pod-people are a pretty good stand in for the swarms of antidepressant-doped leftists that walk the Earth all around us and can only summon energy when they point and shriek to their cohort about the presence of some normal human in the immediate vicinity.
And this is the modern horror story. If you add a violent angle with the imposters capable of becoming murderous creatures like in John Carpenter’s “The Thing,” then it’s doubly frightening, especially with the modern special effects available.
But even this old-fashioned cinematic portrayal hits home by showing the confusion when familiar surroundings aren’t what they seem. And when the truth is doubted by everyone except the growing crowd of pod-people who are coming after you then panic results. Yep, a perfect nightmare scenario. It does resemble the current state of our world too. But I’ll save that for a current events post.
It’s a small story And as you know I like to keep my posts short too. A little slice of life that I enjoyed reading.
A general of ordinary talent, occupying a bad position and surprised by a superior force, seeks his safety in retreat; but a great captain supplies all deficiencies by his courage, and marches boldly to meet the attack. By this means he disconcerts his adversary, and if this last shows any irresolution in his movements, a skillful leader, profiting by his indecision, may even hope for victory.
Napoleon Bonaparte
Regardless of how jaded we may feel about the American electoral system, Vox has provided an inspirational reason to vote.
The mental image of Bono driving his car over a cliff a la “Thelma and Louise” is just the perfect antidote for the sad reality we see around us.
The aircraft are, I fear, getting a little stale. So I’ll change the subject to—no subject, no theme. Just pictures that I think are interesting.
Fractal Symmetry, This photo was taken at a US Military Cemetery Near Canton, Ga.
Mardi Gras, Pensacola version. Don’t know her but she seems to be having a great time.
Beach scene, In January way out on Ft Pickens.
Early March, my front yard
I’m not sure just what the hell was going on with the winds aloft but I don’t remember seeing the like either before or since. For my front yard.
Oliver, one of my cats.
“Run you stick bastards!” Seen in a local parking lot.
Just stopped at a light somewhere. I thought close focus on the drops on the windshield with the background blurred out would make an interesting shot.
TomD
Got home real late but have tomorrow off so I’m cudgeling my brains for a good topic. And since I’ve been running my series of horror movie reviews for October, I considered finishing off the Universal monster movie triumvirate by reviewing Frankenstein.
But Camera Girl was watching the Yankees World Series game and since they were down 0-3 in the series and would be eliminated if they lost tonight, I didn’t have the heart to refuse her control of the tv. As it worked out, New York had an orgy of hitting including a grand slam to take the game 11-4. There was much rejoicing by Camera Girl but I think she understands that no team has ever come back from an 0-3 deficit to win the Series. But let her enjoy the moment.
As for Frankenstein, at its core Mary Shelley’s book is another meditation on the Renaissance civilization in Europe substituting science for God. Well, since Renaissance civilization lately seems to be in full retreat, maybe God is sending his reply.
But properly considered, the idea that Man has replaced God with human intelligence is sort of laughably ridiculous. Every time we are told that biologists have cracked the code that will allow us to cure cancer or reverse aging or turn men into women and vice versa, our efforts are shown to be abysmally inadequate. We talk about uploading our consciousness into the internet to allow us to live forever but we don’t even know what consciousness is or for instance, how a memory from our childhood persists throughout our lives, or even whether it exists in one brain cell or many.
And when we consider the unimaginable size of even the portion of the known universe that we’ve already observed, the idea that we can become like God should quickly evaporate from our minds. From my point of view, the fact that we exist separated from even the nearest star by about twenty-four trillion miles of empty space make me feel like we are an experiment locked into a terrarium that we can’t escape from.
Of course, maybe escaping from our ant farm is part of our testing. Maybe on one of the planets in the Centauri system is a message in English or Proto-Indo-European saying, “Well done. Now here is a clue to get you to level three.” Maybe God has a sense of humor and he wants to let us in on the joke. Maybe some day he’ll give us a book that explains why we can’t avoid childhood cancer, endless war, telemarketers and Joy Reid. Maybe after we die suddenly everything will make sense and we can stop worrying about the war between men and women, type two diabetes and the national debt.
Well, tomorrow is my last chance to review Frankenstein. I better get some sleep so I’ll be ready to report truthfully on the incomparable acting skills and technique of Boris Karloff and Colin Clive. On second thought maybe I should just concentrate on the cool noises and flashing lights in Henry Frankenstein’s electrical glassware display in Germany (I mean Hollywood).
Our hour is marked, and no one can claim a moment of life beyond what fate has predestined.
Napoleon Bonaparte